Flying Squirrels – Phantoms of Darkness

by | Nov 21, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Mammals, Nature

Flying squirrels are phantoms of the darkness. Are they nearly invisible waifs, ghosts, or fascinating and beautiful mammals?  Fortunately, they are real, moderately common in good habitats, but hardly ever seen by people.

Marion recalls her Uncle Bill taking her outside one evening in Florida.  Quietly they waited at dusk and suddenly, a petit squirrel launched from a tree and glided past. A thrilling sighting for a seven-year-old and a fond memory all these years later.

For many years a colony of southern flying squirrels lived in a massive hollow elm at the Indian Creek Nature Center. Although their tree was next to a busy trail, daytime hikers never saw the animals. Many times, I’d lead people to the tree as darkness gathered.  We’d sit quietly. Just as it became almost, but not quite, so dark that vision was impossible squirrels would appear from a hole in the tree. We couldn’t really see them glide but could hear a rustle of leaves as one landed nearby. Flying squirrels are delightful.

Two Species

Many people live close to them and don’t realize it because they are so nocturnal. Two species live in North America. The northern flying squirrel lives mostly in Canada, and the southern one lives from about the Canadian line south to the Gulf of Mexico, so most people live in their range.

Can They Really Fly?

Flying squirrels are tiny but can’t fly. They are gliders and probably should be called gliding squirrels. A special adaptation, called a patagium, allows them to extend loose skin along their sides to form a sort of wing. This allows them to glide from up in a tall tree to the ground or the lower section of a tree trunk.

They live in woodsy areas with big nut trees, especially oaks and hickories with plenty of fallen trees on the ground. They live in hollow trees. Come late evening they scurry about seeking seeds, mushrooms, bird eggs, and insects to eat. They are omnivores. Their greatest enemy is the Great Horned Owl, also nocturnal.

Conflicting Schedules

It’s ironic that just as people head indoors as darkness descends, flying squirrels emerge so they are rarely seen.  Here’s a trick to help people spot the elusive animals.

Flying squirrels love birdseed. They’ll visit a feeder after dark. So will raccoons, opossums, deer, bears, and mice. A feeder can be as busy at midnight as noon.

How You Can Enjoy Sightings of Flying Squirrels

To enjoy flying squirrels and other nocturnal visitors shine a flashlight on the feeder every once in a while, after sunset.  With luck, there will be flying squirrels snacking on seeds.

Although many people let bird feeders be empty overnight, we do the opposite and scatter seed on a platform feeder and the ground. It’s a surefire way to attract the night shift.

Photos Are Hard To Come By

We don’t have a photo of flying squirrels because we’re never near the feeder ready to take pictures in the darkness when the squirrels visit. The National Wildlife Federation offers excellent information about flying squirrels. And YouTube has some fun videos to watch on them.

We also enjoy diurnal squirrels that frequent Iowa yards and forests. 

Furless Tailed Squirrels Revisited

by | Sep 5, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Foraging, Mammals

A few years ago, after seeing many squirrels with nearly naked tails we researched and posted a blog in February 2022. Furless Tailed Squirrels.
The response amazed us. People from around the world visited it and still do every day. We had no idea this condition was so widespread.

So, we’re posting a follow-up. Two winters have passed and our squirrels now have perfectly normal furry tails. We’re unsure if older squirrels have regrown fur or if the new generation never had the condition. Since most squirrels don’t live for more than a few years, we will likely see younger animals.

Whatever conditions caused them to lose their fur seem over. That’s not unusual in wildlife populations. If a serious disease or calamity reduces the population the condition subsides and survivors reproduce with enthusiasm, rapidly restoring abundance.

Based on our website traffic we suspect furless-tailed squirrels have been found far and wide. We predict that they, like our Iowa squirrels, will rebound with healthy furry-tailed animals.

A Short Squirrel Primer

Although many people dislike squirrels for their habit of gobbling up feed intended for birds, we like them. Squirrels are just as fascinating as goldfinches or cardinals, so we put out enough seed for both.

During the 2024 Summer Olympics, we were thrilled watching the graceful and powerful movements of Simone Biles, other gymnasts, and pole vaulters like, Armand “Mondo” Duplantis.

Squirrel climbing up a tree.

What happens when a squirrel falls?

We’ve not heard of a comparable competition for squirrels, but they are also amazing gymnasts and vaulters. In our yard a small oak and a large walnut live next to each other. Every fall the walnut is loaded with nuts that tempt squirrels. We love watching them climb the oak to its tippy top and then make an amazing upward leap to a flimsy walnut twig above. Like human gymnasts and vaulters, squirrels have impeccable balance, flexibility, strength, determination, and courage.

 

Treetop leaps aren’t always successful. Twice we’ve seen squirrels slip off high oak branches and fall 30 or 40 feet to the lawn below. Both times the hapless animals spread eagle, landed with a thump, and scampered off apparently uninjured.  They are an amazing animal.

Late Summer Activity

As we write this in late summer walnuts and acorns are maturing. People may not like squirrels but these trees need them so much their annual nut crop is a bribe. Squirrels eagerly gather and eat many of the nuts but they scamper off and bury some, often a long way from the parent tree. Some nuts are never dug up and become a new tree generation. The exchange is a good deal for both trees and squirrels.

The rodents get nutritious food. Walnuts and acorns get free tree planting. Both win.

Hopefully, anyone reading this is enjoying squirrels that have grown fur on their once furless tails. Enjoy these amazing animals. To learn more about squirrels visit Animal Diversity.

Cottontail Rabbit Capers

by | Aug 1, 2024 | Garden/Yard, Mammals, Pests

Two young cottontail rabbits eating.

Young rabbits “play” to gain skills and show dominance.

Have you noticed the abundance of the cottontail rabbit this summer? While they can create mischief as in eating desired plants, they also are fun to watch.

Winding Pathway’s resident cottontail rabbits give us delightful evening entertainment. Shortly after sunset, a few appear like magic from out of our labyrinth’s tall prairie. As we sit on our porch they scamper about, chase each other, and nibble on the white clover poking out of our lawn.

 

Many people dislike cottontails for their habit of feasting on favored garden plants and gnawing on tree bark in the winter. Because we enjoy both rabbits and Swiss Chard, we keep them away from our vegetables and, thus, appreciate their antics.

Several cottontail species range across most of the United States, southern Canada, and South America. They’re well adapted to thrive in diverse environments. Ours is the Eastern Cottontail rabbit. This year they are especially abundant.

There are Rabbits and Then There are Rabbits

Wild Bunny and domestic bunny play side by side

Side by side

Cottontails and common domestic pet rabbits may look similar but they are vastly different.

Pet Bunnies

Pet bunnies trace their ancestry to Europe and were domesticated thousands of years ago. They make fascinating and loveable pets and thrive in a safe roomy hutch eating commercial pellets. These are the rabbits that were released in Australia and caused enormous agricultural and ecological damage. They readily breed, are social, and join others to dig a series of burrows called warrens. Some readers may remember the award-winning novel, Watership Down, and the Netflix series about precocious rabbits.

Cottontail Rabbits

Cottontails, in contrast, are wild animals that rarely, if ever, become tame or make good pets. Like European rabbits they are social and like the company of other bunnies but not people. Cottontails don’t make burrows but sometimes enjoy ducking down an abandoned woodchuck hole. Cottontails live under dense vegetation, in culverts, and under outbuildings. They eat a wide range of wild plants but love snacking on vegetables. In winter they sometimes eat the bark off young trees. So, be sure to protect your young trees with wire mesh around the base.

Enjoying Both Cottontails and Vegetables

Years ago, we learned a trick that lets us enjoy our resident cottontails and abundance from the garden. European rabbits are high jumpers, but not cottontails. Instead, native bunnies are long jumpers who can’t jump high. Just a wimpy two-foot-tall chicken wire fence around the garden or a young tree keeps them away as long as they can’t get under it.

Why So Many Cottontails This Year

For the past few years, Iowa has been in drought. It limited the new tender growth of clovers and other delectable plants that bunnies love. Sparse rain thinned thickets where they hide. This year’s been wet. Vegetation is tender and abundant yet we’ve not had big early thunderstorms.  Why’s that important to a cottontail?

Before giving birth, a cottontail digs a shallow hole in the ground, often near the edge of a lawn. She lines it with fur and soon deposits three to eight tiny blind helpless babies. Mom mostly stays away but nurses them in the morning or evening by sitting over the burrow and letting her babies nurse. They grow amazingly fast and are out on their own when only about three weeks old.  Mom soon gets ready for another litter.

Who Doesn’t Love a Cottontail Rabbit?

Predators love rabbits. They’re a favorite meal for dogs, cats, raptors, snakes, foxes, and coyotes. There are always rabbits because their survival strategy is to have many babies, even though only a small percent reach adulthood and reproduce.

Getting Rid of Cottontails

Well, why do it?  They are inquisitive and beautiful animals that share yards with people.

An easy solution is to run chicken wire around desirable plants to keep them away. So, people can have their plants and rabbits, too.

Hooray for bunnies! They brighten our evenings as they scamper about our yard.

 

Raccoon Kerfluffle

by | May 30, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Mammals, Pests

raccoon in tree

Raccoons are strong and hungry.

A raccoon kerfluffle with loud growling and snarling startled us to nearly jump from our chairs one May evening.  It came from an oak tree 20 feet away from the house and close to our bird feeder. A flashlight beam on that pitch-black night revealed the culprits – three young raccoons high in the tree.

 

They quickly scurried down the tree and scampered out of flashlight range, letting us return to reading. Why was there a young raccoon kerfluffle? We can only guess but we’re certain they were there because of our nearby bird feeder.

What Raccoons Eat

At first glance, raccoons seem to be carnivores. They have sharp meat-eating teeth and look somewhat like a cross between a dog and a cat. Looks are deceiving. Raccoons are amazingly abundant across much of North America, in large part because they are opportunistic omnivores that seem eager to eat almost anything. They love frogs, crayfish, mussels, earthworms, fish, and any unfortunate mouse or vole they can catch. To a raccoon, a garbage can or dumpster is an invitation to dinner where they might discover delicious pizza crusts and an array of other discarded goodies.

Not Just Birds at the Feeder

Raccoons love fruit and grains. We have them in abundance. That is what lured them to our yard. To these cute but powerful animals, a feeder is an after-dark cafe. Most everyone is familiar with the determination squirrels show when attempting to reach even the most inaccessible feeder. Squirrels work feeders on the day shift while raccoons, deer, mice, voles,

skunks, opossums, bears, and flying squirrels often visit after dark when few people are watching.

Raccoon at a feeder

Raccoons are skillful climbers.

At Winding Pathways, we put expensive sunflower seeds in a feeder suspended by a metal hook on a slippery metal pole. It is so high even deer can’t reach it. But since many birds prefer feeding on the ground, we sprinkle cracked corn, millet, and a few sunflower seeds on the ground beneath the high feeder.

Usually, birds clean up all the seeds by sunset, but frequently some remain as darkness approaches. It’s always gone the next morning. Nocturnal mammals did the clean-up work.

After Dark Feeder Watching

Once in a while, we focus a flashlight beam on the feeder after dark. Often the eyes of deer glow back at us, and occasionally we spot other animals enjoying a seed dinner. Usually visiting raccoons eat quietly, but the startling noise we heard that night came from squabbling youngsters.

Adaptable Raccoons

Raccoons are amazingly adaptable. Our son lives in one of the most densely populated cities in the world – Brooklyn, NY. He occasionally sees a raccoon sticking its head up from a dumpster.

They are not just in North America. Raccoons were introduced to Russia to create a fur resource. They also were released in 1934 in Germany and have since spread far and wide and are increasingly common in Ukraine. Many Japanese people imported baby raccoons as pets and released some as they grew large and unruly. Today wild raccoons range through much of that Asian country.

Whether in Russia, Ukraine, or Japan they are exotic, invasive animals causing mischief. Although common in the United States they are native here and sometimes create a mess as they paw through a trash can or raid a chicken coop. However, they’re fascinating and beautiful animals that can often be spotted beneath a feeder in a flashlight beam.

The Nature Conservancy posts an excellent blog called “Seven US Species Invading Other Countries.”  Raccoons top the list.

Nightly Adventure Continues

Since that evening, the trio of masked bandits that caused a raccoon kerfuffle have returned.  Sometimes, like any siblings, they get along.  Other times they disturb the night as they screech, snarl, and growl at each other until we shine a light on them or shoo them off. We can always count on some nocturnal adventure at Winding Pathways.

White-Footed Mouse

by | Feb 22, 2024 | Birds, Mammals, Nature, Pests

We’ve blogged before about a white-footed mouse in the house.  We read the story to our kids when they were little. Time after time we snuggled down with the book and they never got tired of hearing why the mouse might be cute but doesn’t belong in the house. A recent internet search for the specific book revealed lots of stories but not the one we wanted. Alas. So, here we are decades later writing again about a mouse in the house. Mice are cute but they do not belong in a house.

A mouse

A person holding a mouse.

Whenever we’d find mouse evidence in our house, we’d set traps and usually catch a few, tossing their lifeless bodies outside for scavenger animals to eat.  We do feel badly, but as the mother in the story said, “…a mouse does not belong in a house.”

 

 

 

 

 

White-footed mouse tracks in the snow

Path to the outdoor pantry

In January we changed our mind…..sort of. It was 20 below zero outside. Rich trudged through snow drifts to fill our bird feeders and noticed tracks, tiny mouse tracks, in the snow. A crafty white-footed mouse had scampered on top of the snow the night before to scrounge a few leftover seeds for dinner. Its tracks led to a snug nook out of the wind and under the deck.

 

 

 

 

An average White-footed mouse weighs a whopping .7 ounce. That’s seven-tenths of an ounce! That such a tiny creature can survive the howling wind and intense cold is a marvel of nature. Every nocturnal predator from coyotes to owls tries to capture and eat this diminutive mammal. But, it is wily, wary, and quick. Although not usually out during the day, it has to be mindful of cats and hawks looking for a meal.

After seeing those tracks, we felt a bit sorry for the animal that made them. We still won’t welcome a mouse into our house, but we’re happy it lives just outside in a safe place under the deck. He’s welcome to any seeds the birds overlooked.

To learn more about White Footed Mice and many other wild animals check out Animal Diversity Web out of the University of Michigan.

 

Furless Tailed Squirrel Update

by | Nov 9, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Mammals, Nature

Update on Furless Tailed Squirrels

Furless tail on squirrel

Even in winter, the squirrels’ fur looks healthy…except for their tails.

Two winters ago, we noticed squirrels with nearly furless tails visiting our bird feeders. Our blog about them on Winding Pathways brought hundreds of visitors. Some from other countries! Apparently, we weren’t the only people seeing these hapless animals.

Last winter we had almost no squirrels in the yard. We wonder if the malady that caused them to lose tail fur might have knocked their population way back.

This fall we’re seeing plenty of both fox and gray squirrels in our yard. Their populations have rebounded. And, they have long, furry tails! Squirrels make us happy. While many people don’t like them gobbling seeds at the feeder, we are OK with that and find them as fascinating and fun as cardinals, chickadees, and goldfinches.

Squirrels and the Derecho

Now three years since the disastrous derecho that felled thousands of trees in the Eastern Iowa area, we’re seeing the vital work squirrels do. In the wake of the storm, people planted thousands of trees. Then came three drought years. The National Weather Service placed Cedar Rapids into its exceptional drought category in 2023.

The drought killed many human-planted trees but the ones planted by squirrels are doing just fine. Thanks to them, baby hickories, walnuts, and oaks are poking through the soil in nearby woodlands and our yard.

This fall we’ve watched squirrels carry acorns and walnuts across the yard, dig frantically, and bury their treasure. These enthusiastic gatherers and diggers plan to return during winter’s lean months to retrieve dinner from underground storage. Fortunately, squirrels bury more nuts than they’ll ever need. Unfortunately for them, some of the furry hoarders die with their hidden hoard untouched to sprout in the spring. Squirrels are master tree planters.

American Ninjas in the Yard

An oak and a walnut live about 150 feet south of our back deck.  Acorns and walnuts are epicurean squirrel delights, and our trees attract the furry acrobats. Squirrels like to use treetops as highways, jumping from one to the next. Our oak and walnut presented them with a problem. There is a several-foot gap between their branch tips. We are fascinated watching the squirrels make the long leap from twig to twig, sometimes leaping up to reach a branch on another tree, often while clutching a nut in its teeth. Their athleticism is astounding. So is their courage.

Squirrels fall. Twice we’ve seen one lose its grip and drop from the top of enormous trees. Both times the furry animals spread eagle their legs and tails while descending and hit the ground with a thump. They are shaken, rest, and then scamper off. A fall that would instantly kill a person, is hardly phased by the squirrels.

This winter we’ll again welcome squirrels to our feeders. They can dine on whole or cracked corn and cobs. We are assured of entertainment with their romps, athleticism and enthusiasm.